Twitter Suspends Journalists Sharing Stephen Miller’s Personal Phone Number

Twitter has decided to enforce its rules relating to the sharing of personal information and has begun to ban users that are sharing the personal phone number of White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.

Online blog Splinter News, a member of the Gizmodo Media Group, made waves today by publishing an article titled “Here’s Stephen Miller’s Cell Phone Number, If You Need It” which unsurprisingly contained the personal phone number of White House Senior Advisor Stephen Miller.

Shortly after the article was published, left-wing journalists began to share it across Twitter, which resulted in Miller’s phone being inundated with aggressive phone calls and texts. The Twitter account of Gab, the social network designed around free speech, took many of these journalists to task on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1009484446062399488

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1009481145631698945

https://twitter.com/getongab/status/1009485329273782272

Other conservative figures also joined Gab in calling out the blatant doxing — a term referring to the leaking of an individual’s personal details — of Miller and the veiled encouragement of harassment. Dan Gainor, the Media Research Center’s Vice President for Business and Culture also took to Twitter to condemn the journalists for their blatant attempts to harass Miller:

https://twitter.com/dangainor/status/1009483915629867009

Soon enough, Twitter began to remove some tweets featuring Miller’s phone number or links to the article containing Miller’s number, which greatly angered journalists from Splinter News who have since written an article about their original article being “censored.”

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A Twitter spokesperson said in a statement: “Today, we temporarily blocked accounts that shared this information until they deleted the Tweet that violated our rules. At this time, the number that was previously being shared is no longer a valid number and, as such, we are no longer enforcing our policy against individuals Tweeting or linking to that information.” Twitter’s  guidelines say users “may not publish or post other people’s private information without their express authorization and permission.”

Splinter News claims that when asked about the suspension of the accounts of users that tweeted Miller’s number, Twitter simply responded: “We are aware of this and are taking appropriate action on content that violates our Terms of Service.”